209 Smuggling, and About Changes in Allegiance (Normally Turkish Subjects Who Took Austrian Nationality)
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Book Reviews 209 smuggling, and about changes in allegiance (normally Turkish subjects who took Austrian nationality). The student of the archival material contained in Professor Ilić’s book is also fully briefed on the gradual emigration of the inhabitants of Belgrade and other places in Serbia: for political and also economic reasons, they left their Turkish-ruled homes and came to settle in Zemun. Apart from Belgrade, the following places in Serbia are mentioned as home towns of the immigrants: Sremčica, Borak, Palež, Ritopek, Godiljevo, Godačica, Orašac, Sibnica, Ostružnica, Grabovac, Višnjica, Arnajevo, Jaružice, Guberevac, Veliko Selo, Bre stovac, Valjevo, Poreč, Veliko Gradište, Niš, et al. Severa' documents also speak of Greeks who had left Macedonia and Epirus and settled chiefly in Belgrade and Zemun. To be pre cise, the following are mentioned as home-towns of these expatriates: Serres, Thessaloniki, Meleniko, Kozani, Katranitsa (Pirgoi), Servia, Klisoura, Siatista, Jannina, Moskhopolis and Korytsa. The Greeks who settled in Belgrade and Zemun were mainly merchants and turned their hands for the most part to the conveyance of goods between Turkey and Austria. The editor of the documents, Professor Ilič, underlines, in his detailed prologue, the part played by the various regions of Serbia in the trade in animals of the Erge centres of the Habs burg Empire. Animals were bought especially in the Serbian region of Šumadija and sold in the following market-centres of Austro-Hungary: Osijek, Kanjiža, Pest, Vác, Kecsemét, Sopron and Vienna. The evidence provided by these documents throws light in various ways upon a long period until now considered dark by historians of Yugoslavia. It would not, I think, be any kind of overstatement to stress that only three books of archival material recently published : Slavko Gavrilović, Prilog istoriji trgovine i migracije Balkan-Podunavlje XVIII i XIX stoleća [A contribution to the history of trade and migrations in the Balkan and Danubian lands in the 18th and 19th centuries], Belgrade, Serbian Academy for Sciences and Fine Arts (SANU) specialist publications, book DXXXIII, 1969; Radmila Tričković, Dva turska popisa Krajine i Kliuia iz 1741 godine (Mešovita gradja-Miscellanea 2, drugi deo) [Two Turkish census-lists of 1741 for the regions of Krajina and Ključ (Miscellanea 2, part two)], Belgrade 1973; and Professor Ilić’s present book: have succeded in depicting the historical past of Belgrade and of all Serbia during the 18th century in so clear a fashion, much more clearly than all previous Yugoslav historiography. It is in this that the importance of Beograd i Srbija u dokumentima arhive Zemunskog magistrata od 1739 do 1788 godine lies. The detailed prologue, the accurate summaries preceding the documents, the correct reading of the documents, which are written in the difficult Gothic script, and the exhaustive comments on the text, all testify to the value of the book and its author’s selfless labour. Mention should be made here of the great help given in the production of the book by Bo siljka Mihailovič, a staff-scholar of the Historical Archive of the city of Belgrade. Finally, I should like to give my best wishes to Professor Ilič for the speediest possible production of volume two of the documents, covering the period 1788-1804. Thessaloniki I. A. Papadrianos Institute for Balkan Studies Assa, Aharon, Makedoniia i Evreiskiia Narod (no publisher, Jerusalem, 1972) pp. 161. The main thesis of this historical meander is that the histories of Israel and Macedo nia have many parallels and Assa states it as his intention to bring these out (p. 103). He claims 14 210 Book Reviews that the “wide world” knows very little about Macedonia (p. 9), presumably his rationale for serving up so much very general information. However, by publishing the book in Israel in Bulgarian he cannot expect to reach much of the “wide world” or even the Israeli reading public. Given the level of the book it is perhaps best for him that the book appeared thus. This sketch is based on a very slender bibliography, some of Dubnov’s history, Mat- kovski’s study on the destruction of Macedonian (Skopiot) Jewry and a few other items which appeared in Bulgarian. Kashales’ 5 volume history of the Jews of Bulgaria was apparently not looked at (only an article of his in the “Bulgaria” volume of the Diaspora Encyclopedia is referred to), nor was Even-Tov’s History of the Jews in Yugoslavia, nor any of the many works in Hebrew and other languages on the Jews of Salonika. (Even if Assa were unable to cope with other languages one might expect some mention of the work in Bulgarian of Mezan from the 1920’s and 30’s). The vast majority of pages are devoid of any documenta tion which is as it should be since the material presented is in the main of such general know ledge as to require none. The text is largely a pedestrianly written, ill-planned, non-focused ramble through Ma cedonian and Bulgarian history, accompanied by brief forays into the history of the Jews of the area or global politics. To give but one example of the style: one early chapter ends with Alexander the Grat conquering the Middle East and coming to Jerusalem etc. (p. 20) and the next chapter begins (p. 21) “11 March 1943...” the day the Nazis deported the Jews of Skopje—with no transitional explanation. Assa’s lack of perspective can be perhaps illustrated by his exposition of the following point (p. 119): the great Jewish historian, Dubnov, had written something to the effect that martyrs contribute to the formation of a people’s national consciousness. This thought, of itself not too unique, nor particularly characteristic of Dubnov, better known as an oppo nent of the “Leidensgeschichte” approach tj Jewish history, serves Assa as a base for elabo rating the theory that were it not for the Holocaust in general and the loss of Macedonian (read Skopiot) Jewry in particular the Jewish people might not have made its way to the creation of the State of Israel. Positing a link between the Holocaust and the creation of the State of Israel is certainly no novelty, but the place, in Assa’s theory, assigned to Macedonian Jewry would be positively comic were it not for the horror of the whole subject. Not only were Jewish losses elsewhere in Europe so much greater but even in his region, in Greece (Salonika), the loss was about 20 times as great. Indeed Assa is 99% insensitive to one of most significant and intriguing aspects of the history of Macedonian Jewry, their interrelation with the historic cultures of the area, Greek, Slav and Turkish. Assa clearly identifies only with the Slavic sector. Greeks figure only in his book briefly in antiquity and in the Byzantine period. Salonican Jewry is mentioned very briefly as flourishing (pp. 28, 44) in the XVI century and re-appears again briefly (pp. 112- 115) to be murdered by the Nazis. The real gap in the historiography of the Jews of Mace donia, the absence of a work which would address itself to the question of Jewish life amid the various cultures, is not a gap which Assa has tried to fill; he apparently has no aware ness of its existence. Even with his apparent linguistic limitations there are works in Bulgarian which could have made him more alert to the problematics of Slavic Macedonian-Salonican relations (e.g. Snegarov’s book on Salonika and Bulgarian culture). Assa has not even given any significant compilation of historical data on Jewish life in the northern part of Macedonia, such as Mezan’s 2 part study “Jewry in Macedonia” Makedonski Pregled 1930. Rather, Assa at one or two points gives brief lists of rabbis active in the area. But he spends far too much time discussing general subjects: Bogomils, the Book Reviews in Samuelid state, Cyril and Methodius, bandits, anti-Ottoman revolt, the Bulgarian nation al reawakening, the general course of World War II and German activities in Macedonia during World War II, without adding anything to our knowledge of these subjects. Some of Assa’s factual errors include: Hitler’s real name was not “Kikelgruber”(p.23). Assa tries to argue that traces of Semitic languages in Balkan languages come from Alexan der the Great’s expedition to the Middle East (p. 23). He asserts (hat Cyril and Methodius not only borrowed some Hebrew letters for the Cyrillic alphabet but also took the Hebrew practice of using letters as numbers (p. 26) (which was, by their time, an established Greek usage). What of Assa’s prime contribution to the literature—the lsraeli-“Macedonian” par allels? How unique and uniting are they? How precise are they? Both peoples are small, with an ancient history of long suffering and ensfuement (p. 6). Israel was recognized by the UN in 1947 as part of a wave of liberation from colonialism and Macedonia emerged after World War II also (p. 6). Both are near ti e geographic centers of their respective re gions and each is a storm center thereof (p. 10). The historic formation of both peoples be gan with ancient migrations to their present homes (p. 11). Both states suffered numerous invasions and Philip and Alexander of Macedonia were paralleled by David and Solomon [“ALSO FATHER AND SON” (p. 13 capitals in orig.)]. Such parallels of so generalized phenomena could easily be made between many states. When he gets into the XIX century Assa gets out onto thinner ice, as he moves into the period of national revivals. He asserts towards the end of the XIX century all humanity was awaking from a deep sleep (p.